In order to prevent a potentially damaging and/or dangerous amount of electrical current from being delivered to an electrical circuit, most modern electronic devices, such as smart phones, include some form of over-current protection. For example, an electronic device may include a fuse that opens, thereby preventing the flow of electrical current, when the current through the fuse exceeds some predetermined threshold (e.g., 8 amps).
Typically, when the over-current condition is present, something has gone wrong, and terminating the flow of current is the desired behavior. However, some electronic devices may include certain operations (e.g., a camera flash) that cause the current to spike above the normal limit for a short period of time in a well understood and desired manner. In order to accommodate these situations, the circuitry must be designed to tolerate these higher current conditions (both the good and the bad ones), and doing so increases the cost and complexity of the electronic device.